Mailout 29 May 2022 (Ascension, Yr C)

Fr George Mainprize
Jun 7, 2022
8 min read

Dear People of God

Grace to you and Peace

I have just spent most of the last week on a Clergy (Silent) Retreat. It was marvellous! A few days to be alone with God (OK, there were services and talks throughout the day when we were together but alone in our togetherness) and it was a good chance to read (Godly reading, naturally) and to take stock of where we are in our various ministries. It gave me the chance to work through some of the issues that have been confronting me and, hopefully, to come to a solution.

I’m something of a freak for impressive “God spaces”. Show me a European Cathedral, or one in the English style, and I’ll probably be awe-struck. Durham, Ely, Winchester, Salisbury, Canterbury …. you get the picture. The faith that went into building those hymns to the glory of God (and not to put too fine a point on the social system that allowed such wealth to be concentrated in the hands of the Church) is almost beyond expression. The music that fills them is a foretaste of the music of heaven. But God is also deeply present in less grand buildings. Much of my history is in small buildings without impressive liturgies and fine choirs and the glory of God is no less expressed through the faithful people who worship there. My childhood years were in St Drostan’s at Kotara (part of New Lambton parish) (and I also sang in the Newcastle Cathedral Choir); I worshipped at St Martin’s Macknade (Ingham parish in North Queensland) where the congregation was sometimes as large as ten, and St Saviour’s at Halifax (same parish same size congregation), a small building in the Queensland style.

Do you know how the glory of God found real expression in those places? In the people who make up the congregations, no matter how small. It’s the same here. Sometimes it’s easy when we are small in number to feel as though we are going nowhere in a world which is confidently expecting the traditional expressions of church with wither and die. I have found, since coming here, a wonderful group of people through whom faith shines brightly, and the longer I spend amongst you, the more I am aware of it. Never lose faith in what God is doing amongst you here! The best is yet to come, and next week, at Pentecost, we look for the guidance of the God’s Spirit on the next stages of our journey.

This week’s edition is put together rather late (due to Retreat). Next week we should have a report from Parish Council, which actually met a fortnight ago (my fault for not following up).

See you in church

The Lord be with you

Fr George

0410 586 119 gmainprize@bigpond.com

COLLECT and READINGS for Ascension Day

Sentence

God has raised Christ from the dead and seated him at this right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named.

Collect

Grant, we pray, almighty God, that as we believe your only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to have ascended to the heavens, so we may with heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen

Acts 1:1-11 The ascension of Jesus

Psalm 110 The eternal supremacy of the King

Ephesians 1:15-23 The dominion of Christ

Luke 24:55-53 Jesus is taken from the disciples’ sight

SERMON (Fr George)

In the Name of God. Amen

In a sense the Ascension of Jesus is the end of a chapter, and it’s as though we take an interval after an exhausting first half where we have gone through the burly-burly of what as been a pretty full-on ministry of Jesus, the trauma of the crucifixion and the huge shock of the Resurrection. Who wouldn’t need to take a breather? But with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight we know that it’s not the end of the story: it’s just gathering strength for the burst of energy that is to come!

We have all sorts of images of the Ascension of Jesus. He wafts away on a cloud perhaps. A mate of mine was on a pre-ordination retreat in Durham (England) in a church which was a mediaeval building where the frescoes had somehow escaped the depredations of the Puritans during the Commonwealth: the portrayal of the Ascension showed a cloud with a pair of legs and very knobbly toes hanging from it! Rather took the mind from heavenly things! However we think of it, it marks the end of the post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus and the pause before the start of the application of the whole thrust of the ministry of Jesus.

Whatever you believe God set out to achieve through the Incarnate Word in his earthly ministry and through his death and resurrection, whether an atoning death, a ritual sacrifice or a re-calibration of the settings of the human condition, and they have all had their run in the theological debate stakes over the years, there is now a sense that the message is busting to get out of the confines of a narrowly Jewish culture. Jesus frequently spoke of “sheep which are not of this fold” and although his earthly ministry was, by necessity, limited to the rather narrow confines of first century Judea, his call is to all people, transcending race, tradition and culture.

Our thinking on the person and work of Jesus and his place in the economy, the household, of God is rather complicated if we think of distinct individuals within the Godhead: literally thinking of a Father, a distinct person, with the Son, or Jesus, by his right hand, and somehow the Spirit as a more fluid entity, perhaps as a dove, sort of hovering around between the two. But we believe that God is One: indivisible and eternal, not limited by any earthly conceptions of space and time. To get into a theological argument, it is the person of Jesus in which the Word becomes Incarnate: the humanity of Jesus is always subject to God. If you are not into the finer points of theological debate it can get a but doughy here and lead us into all sorts of bother. But the whole point of the Ascension is to rule a line under the earthly ministry manifested in Jesus the Christ and allow the emerging Church, the continuing Body of Christ, if you will, to start work.

We are that continuing Body: we don’t rely on our own talent to do it. It’s the work of the Spirit, the Sanctifier, to enable us to be the holy common people of God. We meet to encounter Christ in the Eucharist, to listen, attently I hope, to the proclamation and elucidation of the Word, such as I am attempting to do with you now, and to go out to BE the Body of Christ in God’s world. At the end of this service I will dismiss you: OK, you’ll go and have morning tea but even that can be a sacrament of community within a hopefully pleasant social occasion, and then go from here to encounter Christ in day-to-day life.

He stands before you in many ways. In the supermarket, in the OpShop, in the SRE class, in the Quilters Group, in our various groups, in the people we encounter day to day, in the person seeking assistance ……. How will you respond? Pray for the grace of the Holy Spirit to recognise Christ in these encounters and come next Sunday to live once again the empowering of the Spirit, the Sanctifier, in Pentecost.

The Lord be with you.

INTERCESSIONS (The Mothers’ Union)

Almighty God your Son Jesus Christ has promised that you will hear and receive our prayers.

We pray for the world:

We pray for the world and its nations. Guide their leaders to work for peace, mutual trust and

jointly work together to save the resources of our planet, for future generations. Our thoughts and prayers go to those in areas of conflict and oppression, remembering the people of the Ukraine.

We pray for our own nation for our new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and government, may they listen to the needs of the people and govern with honesty and integrity.